Legoland Photos

I uploaded 57 photos taken (over three days) at Legoland to Flickr. As usual, for my comments see www.spitzer.us first.

June Photos

I uploaded 40 photos from June to Flickr. See www.spitzer.us.

May Photos

Just three photos from May were worth uploading to Flickr. See www.spitzer.us.

Update: I found another 19 photos from May on Claire's computer that were worth uploading to Flickr.

April Photos

Now that I'm caught up on photos, I'll try to stay that way.  I uploaded new photos from April to Flickr.  See www.spitzer.us.

New Photos on Flickr

I uploaded new photos from February and March to Flickr.  See www.spitzer.us.

Just two PyCon outings

I left the hotel only twice in between arriving the evening of March 12th and leaving the evening of the 20th.

March 13th (Thursday) was tutorial day at PyCon--I was quite exhausted after three excellent and intense tutorials from 9:00 AM to 9:30 PM. The conference itself was Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sessions started at 9:00 AM and lasted until at least 6:30 PM. The lightning talks on Friday and Saturday had no fixed end time. And then I attended Open Space sessions late into the evenings.

The sprint tutorial on Sunday lasted until about 7:30 PM, and then I worked late preparing for the sprint. (I'm glad I got a jump on things--I found some work to do that kept me busy for the entire sprint, and beyond. I'll eventually write more on that in my Python blog.)



That's me in the Django sprint room (third from the right in my beige fleece vest). (It was nice of other people at PyCon to take so many photos and put them on Flickr tagged with "pycon2008". I didn't even bother taking my camera out of my room.)

Monday I worked hard at the sprint, and tummy.com brought in pizza (the only Chicago deep-dish pizza I had the entire time), which made it easy to work late.



Tuesday I finally left the hotel for the first time, and joined a gang of Django sprinters for dinner a few stops away on the "blue line".



That's me on the far right.



And that's me on the left.

Then Wednesday I decided to join a smaller group of Django sprinters on an outing to see Adrian Holovaty play with Alfonso Ponticelli and Swing Gitan at the Green Mill. He's a big fan of Gypsy jazz (which is how Django got its name) and an excellent guitar player. I'm glad I didn't succumb to my introverted tendencies and stay in the sprint room, hacking away. The music was excellent, and the Green Mill was a great place to see and hear it.



While The Green Mill looked like a dive bar from the outside, on the inside it's rather ornate (in a prohibition-era way) and reeks of history. I sat next to a friendly guy who had done his research and (in between sets) told me the story of Joe E. Lewis.

I don't regret not seeing more of Chicago, since I enjoyed every minute I spent at the conference. I certainly got as much out of it as possible. But perhaps next year (PyCon will be in Chicago again next year) I'll give myself a few more breaks and see some of the city.

Select PyCon Photos

I'm at PyCon. I brought my camera, but I haven't taken it out of my room yet. But several others have, and have been uploading their photos to Flickr and tagging them.

Here are some of my favorites (presented in an order that I hope will tell a little story for the kids):




This is the tower of the hotel that is hosting the conference. I'm on the eighth floor. The conference tutorials, sessions and sprints are all in the hotel complex, so I have yet to leave the hotel since I arrived Wednesday night.


My room looks just like this.




More than 1000 people registered for PyCon. For the three days of the conference, we were all together in the mornings and late afternoon, but the sessions split into four tracks during the day.




I'm actually in this one. If you look at the largest size of the photo, you may barely recognize me sitting in the back row (not at a table with a white cloth), all the way to the right. (I didn't realize that most of the people from the previous session were staying for the one I came for; I was lucky to get a seat.)

3 anecdotes

I found a piece of pink construction paper taped to the headboard of my bed the other day, with a heart shape cut out of it. Around the heart was written (in crayon) "Furr Dad love sekret Jild Fnd - I wot tll you Hoo mad this." [Translation: For Dad, love secret child friend. I won't tell you who made this.] (The J in "Jild" was backwards.) Elleda has been enjoying writing notes and in her journal she got from her tooth fairy "Trixie" after her second tooth fell out.

When we got back in the van to head home after Gabe's birthday party, Henry was singing (before we turned the music on) "Nothing's gonna change my world; Nothing's gonna change my world."--a line from the Beatles' "Across the Universe". I guess a song can get stuck in a two-year-old's head too. (That song has been in the news lately.)

I don't really have a cute anecdote about Gabe, but for several weeks I've been enjoying taking him out for breakfast on Friday mornings. That kid can eat! He'll eat his Mickey Mouse pancake, sausage and egg and then eat most of one of my pancakes. And he still has room for a donut if we have time. Claire and I have noticed that he has been acting out much less, and has been sharing and doing special favors for Henry and Elleda. Perhaps our "dates" have a little to do with that. Or perhaps he's maturing.

I've updated Flickr (and www.spitzer.us) with new photos.

October photos

I uploaded our photos from October to Flickr. You'll find details at www.spitzer.us.

October was Henry's second birthday (we had a couple small parties: one at Skypark and one at his school). Elleda and Gabe enjoyed playing soccer in a league for their first time. And of course, Halloween was a big deal.

December photos up

I just uploaded our photos from December to Flickr. You'll find details at www.spitzer.us.

We certainly did have a merry xmas. My parents came to visit for five days (that went by very quickly). And most of Claire's family joined us for dinner on xmas day; so we had a full house. The kids had fun playing with their cousin, and there were no complaints about sitting at the kids' table--Claire and I actually got to sit and enjoy our meal.

I neglected to blog about Elleda's first missing tooth. I believe she noticed it was loose in early December and it fell out about a week later. She was quite proud and excited. She cried at bedtime though because she didn't want the tooth fairy to take her tooth. So I suggested that she draw a picture of her tooth (since she loves to draw) and leave a note so the tooth fairy takes that instead. She did a great job drawing a little picture and colored a frame around it. I went out to get a dollar coin and Claire left it under her pillow with a little set of bubble-gum flavored lip balm. She was so excited the next morning that she came downstairs as I was leaving for work (around 5:30!) to show me. The lip balm (Claire's idea) was a big hit--she still caries it everywhere. But she still doesn't really understand money, so I think her golden coin is stashed away with her other treasures. (I don't think it occurred to her to spend it.)

www.spitzer.us is back from the land of stale websites

I finally made time to update www.spitzer.us. I haven't uploaded any photos since December 2006, so I've got some catching up to do. But instead of starting with January (2007) and working my way towards the present, I decided to upload the most-recent photos (from November) and work my way backwards, while still regularly uploading recent photos.

Note that while I said "upload", I'm actually uploading the photos to Flickr, and writing about them (and linking to them) on www.spitzer.us. As I wrote, I expect it to evolve into a photoblog.

Contest photos

I enjoy listening to The Apple Phone Show podcast and reading their blog.

They have a couple contests running right now.

As the entry to the first contest, I uploaded these two photos of Elleda and Gabe I took with my iPhone to Flickr.com.



This blog post is my entry to the second contest.

17% closer to catching-up

I spent a little time the last couple evenings sort through photos, and finally got the December 2006 photos uploaded to our web site and Flickr.

That's one month done and five to go (six when the end of June comes).

I'm out of practice culling the good photos from the just OK, so there are 43 to look at. I didn't like any of them enough to tag "5stars", but I guess this one is my favorite: